Timor rescue ends one more savage day

By PHILIP ENGLISH and GREG ANSLEY

The slaying of a Timor militia leader was the flashpoint for the savage rampage his followers unleashed on United Nations staff in Atambua, West Timor.

Olivio Mendosa Moruk, who inspired and orchestrated death and destruction among East Timorese after their vote for freedom vote a year ago, was killed by unknown assailants on Tuesday.

Some reports say he was shot, others that his throat was cut and his body mutilated. By Wednesday he was a martyr and an excuse for his followers' attacks on United Nations workers in Atambua.

Moruk was on a list of 19 people named by the Indonesian government as facing prosecution for the East Timor violence, and his killers may have wanted to silence him.

A report in the Jakarta Post yesterday said he was killed by rogue elements of the Indonesian Army to stop him giving evidence on the East Timor massacres.

Whether or not this is true, the Atambua killings confirm that the militiamen are targeting humanitarian aid workers, and indicates their growing desperation.

The three deaths on Wednesday are the latest in a series of more than 150 violent attacks on UN staff since the militiamen retreated across the border last October after the international peacekeeping force arrived.

Since the retreat, the militiamen have consolidated their power in West Timor refugee camps that still house up to 120,000 people, ruling them by violence and intimidation and stopping them going home.

Estimates of the number of militia fighters in West Timor range from less than 200 to an Indonesian figure of 1730.



New Zealand forces' slick helicopter evacuation of 43 United Nations workers from the West Timor town just before sundown ended one more day of savagery.

Hours earlier, the workers had left three of their colleagues behind to die brutally at the hands of hundreds of the frenzied militiamen.

The militiamen attacked the Atambua office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees after Moruk's funeral. They gathered outside the UNHCR building just after midday.

One Atambua resident described seeing 20 trucks of militia armed with bush knives and homemade rifles.

Chris Lom, of the International Organisation for Migration, said: "Everyone had been advised to stay home, and shops were shut. But they had not expected the crowd to run amok. The balloon went up."

The IOM office was ransacked and its cars stolen. But the mob focussed on the UNHCR building, which was stormed by men carrying all kinds of weapons of death.

Inside was Carlos Caseras of Puerto Rico who earlier had frantically e-mailed a UN security office to say: "We sit here like bait, unarmed."

Six hours later, he and two colleagues were dead. "The mob stabbed them to death inside the headquarters, dragged their bodies to the road and set them on fire," a military intelligence officer said.

Another international aid worker in another part of town was reported to have been trapped in her hotel.

She was stoned and suffered serious axe wounds before escaping.

"At no time did the Indonesian military move to intervene in the attack," said the UNHCR chief spokesman in Geneva, Ron Redmond.

At the UNHCR compound, the workers who were eventually airlifted to safety fled over a rear fence, leaving Carlos Caseras, Ethiopian Samson Aregahegn and Bosnian Pero Simundza trapped in a radio room as they tried to contact colleagues in Dili.

"These were peaceful, unarmed humanitarians who gave their lives trying to help those who had lost everything in conflict," UN High Commissioner for Refugees Sadako Ogata said in tribute.

At 2pm Atambua time, the UN asked New Zealand to evacuate the survivors.

It was 6pm in Wellington, and within an hour Defence Force chief Air Marshal Carey Adamson had approved use of three Air Force Iroquois helicopters.



Back at the New Zealanders' East Timor base in Suai, at 2 30pm local time, a contingent of New Zealand Battalion Group troops was told to prepare to help in the evacuation.

By about 5pm, nine soldiers and two medics, plus the three helicopter crews, were flying from Suai to Atambua, about 50km away.

There, Indonesian troops had taken the 43 UN staff to a barracks about 2km north of the town.

Squadron Leader Mark Cook was air mission commander. Fellow Southlander Major Lyndon Blanchard, acting commanding officer of the battalion, was in overall command in one of two Australian helicopters hovering just inside the East Timor border to keep watch on the operation and provide a communications link.

The New Zealand helicopters, from the Hobsonville-based No 3 Squadron, flew to Atambua at about 1000m to avoid small arms fire.

"It looked secure," said Squadron Leader Cook. "I had the ground commander on my aeroplane as well.

"We decided it looked safe so we landed in with two of the three aeroplanes and dropped off approximately 10 New Zealand troops who acted as security for us on the ground and also liaised with the Indonesians.

"Once we dropped them off we got airborne again empty until our guys on the ground could confirm that it was safe and everything was ready for the evacuation. That took about four to five minutes."

The three helicopters then picked up the evacuees and took off for an Australian base at Balibo, about eight minutes flying time away.

They then went back to Atambua to pick up remaining evacuees and the New Zealand troops.

Squadron Leader Cook said the Indonesian forces did well to gather up the UN workers after the killings, and provided good security at the landing zone - a field next to the barracks.

But during the landings and take-offs, there was always the risk of drawing militia fire.





"On takeoff we climbed at max performance on the best angle we could to get out of small arms range as soon as possible.

"We had some real time pressure because of daylight. We had an hour of daylight by the time we got airborne at Suai to effect the whole mission."

Squadron Leader Cook said the UN workers, three of them injured, were calm and controlled.

"Obviously when we put them on the ground at Balibo they were visibly relieved to be there."

He would not admit to being affected by nerves during the one hour, 15 minute operation.

"I had a fair amount on my plate, running the air mission at the time. We have four radios in the aeroplane and there were constantly people talking on them, all four of them.

"We did not have exact details of numbers of people and that sort of thing before we launched.

"It was very much a case of getting on the ground there, assessing the situation and then modifying our initial plan as circumstances unfolded."

Life for the helicopter crew was getting back to "business as usual" yesterday, he said.

"There was certainly potential for risk.

"It was a relatively straightforward mission made difficult by not having accurate information to plan it on and a very short timeframe to work in.

"It makes things harder, but obviously all the guys involved are used to that sort of thing and can adapt and think quickly on their feet."

Herald Online feature: the Timor mission

UN Transitional Administration in E Timor